150 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
the pro- British government of the Unionist party was well ensconced
based on the electoral support of landlords and rich farmers, and there
was little that the Congress could do to dislodge it. Neither the Con-
gress nor the Muslim League had done well in Sind. Here, Bose deter-
mined that the best bet was to lend Congress support to a government
led by a regional po lit i cal leader Allah Bux.
The prob lems attendant on forming provincial coalitions can be
seen more closely in the Bose brothers’ efforts to work out an arrange-
ment in their home province of Bengal. Subhas and Sarat Chandra
Bose were thwarted in their attempts by the Congress central leader-
ship, popularly referred to as the Congress High Command, and by
Gandhi himself, acting under the dubious in flu ence of the industrial
magnate Ghanashyam Das Birla and a po lit i cal broker named Nalini
Ranjan Sarker, who represented the interests of big business. When Faz-
lul Huq, in 1937, had formed a government of his Krishak Praja party
(KPP) allied with the Muslim League, he had included as many as eight
landlords in his eleven- member ministry. There was only one KPP
representative other than Huq himself, contending with four Muslim
Leaguers, three non- Congress caste Hindus, and two non- Congress
scheduled caste nominees.^31 The Bengal Congress, led by Sarat Chan-
dra Bose, kept bringing radical amendments to tenancy legislation that
would give rights to those at the bottom of the agrarian hierarchy and
prepared the ground for an alliance with the bulk of the Krishak Praja
party, which enjoyed strong support among the Muslim peasantry. In
August 1937, Sarat wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru indicating that as many
as twenty to twenty- five KPP legislators were on his side. All that he
needed from the then Congress president was an announcement that
the Working Committee would authorize alliances with like- minded
groups. He complained about the mischief being done by Nalini Ran-
jan Sarker, a minister who had “sedulously spread the report that the
Working Committee will, in no event, sanction alliances and that has
had the effect of isolating the Congress party.”^32 By March 1938, as
many as thirty- four out of the original thirty- six KPP members of the
Bengal legislative assembly sat with the Congress opposition led by
Sarat Chandra Bose. The government survived divisions in the assem-